


Best Served Hot

by thesometimeswarrior



Series: Looking Toward [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Backstory, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, New Friendships, Uncle-Nephew Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 00:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9466907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: They both want the War to be over. And they both want revenge.Zuko and Katara discuss reasons why.Part Four of the Looking and its Consequences series. Takes place immediately following Sins of the Father.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to my earlier works Looking and its Consequences, Don't Look Back Lest You Turn to Salt, and Sins of the Father though this should be able to be more-or-less understood on its own.
> 
> The premise of this AU is that, rather than staying in his seat and looking away during Zuko's Agni Kai with Ozai, Iroh interferes and stops it. He is branded a traitor because of that decision, and Zuko, having a hard time accepting the consequences of that, convinces Iroh to flee the Fire Nation with him. In Don't Look Back, Lest You Turn to Salt, we find thad that they go to Omashu, and stay there for several years, until the Fire Nation moves to capture it. They flee, and Bumi puts them in touch with the Gaang so that they can teach Aang Firebending. The Gaang, we find, is skeptical when they realize Zuko and Iroh are members of the royal family.
> 
> I sorta noticed a striking lack of Katara in my last piece so this kinda just happened.

Uncle is snoring beside him, but he lays awake, counting the stars and trying to spot any differences between this sky and Omashu’s. There are some, but not many. He suspects that there is a larger gap between this sky and the one in the place he lived before Omashu, the place where he was born, but he never noticed the sky when he was there. 

(There is a lot he never noticed when he was there.)

And because he is awake, when he hears a rustling in the trees, when he sees a figure moving over the ridge toward him and his uncle, he is able to spring up immediately and draw his dual swords.

“It’s okay,” says the figure, raising its arms into the air. And when it gets closer, he sees that it’s Katara. “It’s just me.”

Zuko lowers his weapons.

“Swords? Not bending?” She plops herself on the ground next to where he stands.

He remains upright. “I prefer these.” 

“Sokka wouldn’t. I think he’d give anything to be able to bend instead of relying on his boomerang.”

“He’d choose firebending?”

She doesn’t respond right away, breathes in and out as if in thought. “Maybe not.”

There is a silence, possibly an awkward one, but Zuko doesn’t have anything to say to her, not until she and her friends decide that he and his uncle can teach the Avatar firebending. So, though he slowly sits down beside her, he does nothing to break the quiet.

Eventually, she does. “Can I ask you something?”

He responds with a single nod.

“Why do you want to defeat your father?”

“Why do _you_?”

“Because I hate this war. It’s destroying the world. Aang’s the last Airbender; yo—I mean _they_ —killed all the rest of them, and I was the last Water Bender in the whole Southern Water Tribe!” And…” Her voice changes, hesitates. She closes her eyes. “Because the Fire Nation took my mother away from me.”

“I’m sorry.” And he means it. “That’s something we have in common.”

She looks at him, blinks. “ _Your_ mother?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. She woke me up in the middle of the night, told me never to forget who I was and that everything she did she did for me. The next morning, Azulon was dead, Ozai was crowned Fire Lord, and my mother was gone. Ozai wouldn’t tell me what happened to her, and I’m not hopeful.”

“Is that why you left?”

“Partly.”

She is tentative, but Zuko see that she wants to say more. After a moment, she does. “Why else?”

He looks at her, wonders briefly who in the name of the spirits she thinks is to ask these types of questions of him. “I don’t like to talk about it.”

Katara sighs. “I can understand that. But I need something to convince the others you’re trustworthy. Aang needs a firebending teacher and you and your uncle seem like good people. But all three of us have to agree…”

“Do _you_ trust us?”

“I’d like to.”

She looks at him, and he returns her gaze, looking for an ounce of sincerity. They sit in the silence for several moments, until finally he relents, looks down.

“About three years ago, before I left, I went to a war cabinet meeting. I wasn’t supposed to, but I managed to convince my uncle to get me inside. One of the generals, this old man, proposed as a part of the strategy in the Earth Kingdom, to present a brigade of new recruits as a diversion. Let them get massacred, and then the special forces would sneak up on the Earth Kingdom army, who would be so distracted they’d never see them coming. I stood up and yelled something about those soldiers loving the Fire Nation, that the general had no right to betray them like that.”

He pauses to catch his breath, because thinking about what comes next is hard, makes him flinch that the person who was supposed to be his _father_ almost...would have…

Katara misunderstands the pause for finality. When she speaks, she does so slowly with an air of confusion that she seems to be trying to hide. “So…You left because, they were going to betray...Fire Nation soldiers?”

He almost laughs. _If only_. “No. See, it’s not good etiquette to have an outburst like that in the war room. Particularly not against a seasoned general. Ozai was...displeased with the show of disrespect. And the only way to resolve that is an Agni Kai. Do you know what that is?”

Katara shakes her head.

“It’s a fire duel. One-on-one. Everyone in the royal family is a bender, and pretty much everyone in court is too, so it’s a convenient ceremony to resolve grievances. Traditionally, they were fights to the death, but that hasn’t been the case in several generations. Now, you just fight until you get your opponent in a position that they can’t attack, where you _could_ kill them if you wanted to.”

“So you had to face this general in one-to-one combat?”

“That’s what I thought. And he was old. I was young and strong and a reasonably good bender. I thought I could take him. I was even _excited_ the day of the duel. The whole court showed up to watch, I thought I’d finally be able to prove myself as a worthy prince. But it turned it out that I got something wrong. I spoke out against the general, but it was in Ozai’s war room. So the person I really disrespected was _Ozai_. I turned around there in that arena, and saw him standing there facing me...You have to understand that at the time, I really still thought I could earn his love. That I should. I was terrified of him, my father, my Fire Lord. But I was _loyal._ ” 

He wrinkles his nose as he pronounces the last word, his voice drips with disgust. He looks up at his companion, expecting to see an eye-roll ( _You were loyal to the Fire Lord—and you want us to trust you? HA!_ ) or at least morbid curiosity in her face. But he is shocked to find something in her eyes that resembles genuine concern.

“What happened?” she asks, quietly.

“I fell to my knees. Bowed to him. Begged him for mercy. Apologized again and again. None of it worked. He told me to rise up and fight him. I refused. I wouldn’t fight my Fire Lord. He told me that suffering would teach me respect, and I looked up at him and saw that flames were growing in his hands, and he was lifting them to blast toward my face…”

“No…” whispers Katara.

“No,” confirms Zuko. “He would have, but he never had the chance. My uncle was sitting in the stands of the arena. Before I think I really registered what my father was going to do, my uncle shouted at him to stop, blasted _lightning_ toward him from his seat to get my father to break stance until he could climb up on that stage and put himself between me and Ozai.”

He pauses. When he thinks about it, in retrospect, there is a part of him that still cannot believe his uncle had the audacity to do that. 

(A part of him still, even after three years of assurances from his uncle that he is loved, and that love requires no conditions, real love shouldn’t require any conditions, _I love you, my nephew, I will always love you_ , a part of him still wonders whether he deserved it.)

“Of course,” Zuko continues, finally. “Ozai didn’t like that at all. He told my uncle to move, and when my uncle refused, tried to firebend around him at me. So my uncle attacked him. I think he even burned him a little bit. Ozai didn’t really have a choice. It didn’t matter that my uncle was his brother; he had outright attacked him in front of the entire court. He had to be made an example. The guards rushed the stage, seized my uncle and threw him in prison to await public execution. And in the confusion and the commotion, Ozai forgot all about me and what I had done.”

Katara looks at him, eyebrows creased in concern. “They were going to _kill_ your uncle?”

“Yeah. And I couldn’t let it happen. So I broke him out. And I couldn’t stay in that place with just my father and sister, not without him or my mother. So I left too.”

“I’m so sorry, Zuko.”

He just shrugs.

The silence, pregnant and awkward, is back. Zuko is happy to sit in it, but Katara feels a need to speak. “Sokka thought that you just wanted to defeat Ozai so you could be Fire Lord.”

“I want him to pay for what he’s done to the Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribes and the Air Nation.”

“And to you?”

He shrugs again. “I never really thought about it.” 

(It’s a lie. He has, he _has_ , but his little life—and what _didn't_ happen to him—means nothing at all when he thinks about the millions of others that man has slaughtered.) 

“I just want him to pay,” he continues. “And I want this war to end.” 

(And I want to go _home_ , he thinks. Back to Omashu.)

“It will end. Aang can beat him. But he’ll need our help.”

Zuko looks up at her, and she knows the question he’s asking.

“I’ll convince the others. We need you.” She rises. “We’ll see you in the morning.”

When she’s gone, Zuko lays himself back down on the bedroll, listens to Uncle’s snores. When he finally falls asleep, he dreams of the arena. 

But this time, Ozai is the one on his knees. And the fire is in Zuko’s hands.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! 
> 
> I live and breathe for comments!


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